


What Eve Stole

by Liralen



Category: Hockey RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: Angst, Cheating, F/M, Het and Slash, M/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-07
Updated: 2011-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-14 12:59:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liralen/pseuds/Liralen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason rolled to his side in sleep, and Antoine slipped into the warm space his body left behind. That easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Eve Stole

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [It's Not Safe](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/2201) by Abby20. 



It's a party, it's always a party somewhere: Ottawa, Bingo, the road in between; different faces but the same nicknames, the same war stories and back-slapping hugs. The same brightness to his eyes, the thrum of tension in the muscles beneath his skin. The _pulling_.

Pulling away.

Antoine's drunk like always. Karen never is. She talks and laughs in the kitchen with Schubie's girlfriend, the two of them armed with lipgloss smiles against the slinking-slippery things the boys pick up in the arena parking lot after games. Karen's sipping ginger ale, the only sober eye for miles and working twice as hard not to notice the absence beside her. Always feeling it like a stray hair tickling her back, that chest-high pulling hooked behind some rib. Maybe the one Eve stole. Someone told her once that it was only an old wive's tale, women carrying one more rib than men, but she never looked it up to be sure, and anyway, isn't it prettier to think so?

* * *

In the closed darkness of the bedroom Antoine kissed her neck lazily, and Karen said, "He seemed surprised to see me."

"Who?" Antoine licked over her pulse, tickling, but she didn't laugh or squirm or sigh.

"Jason."

Antoine's mouth stilled. She touched his back and felt the skin taut beneath her fingers, his spine rigid, the hard knobs of bone standing out in relief. He didn't say anything for so long that she thought he might have turned to stone.

"He didn't know I was here?" She tried to make it into a question, rather than an accusation.

"You're not here, most of the time."

"That's not what I meant."

Antoine sighed, tried to nuzzle her throat, but she tipped her chin down to stop him until he finally sighed again and rolled to his back, one arm flung over his eyes as if blocking out a brilliant sky.

"We're not really that good of friends," Antoine said, and Karen knew by the faint guilty whine in his voice that it was a lie because Antoine had always been a terrible liar. She didn't know why he even tried.

"He came to your house," she pointed out.

"Yeah, well... he's a kind of weird guy." His voice was thin with irritation, but his hand found her hip under the sheet, touch light and gliding and electric. "You're only here for one night, are we seriously going to spend it talking about Jason fucking Spezza?"

He never used to swear, she thought as Antoine pressed her back into the bed and dissolved the questions in her mouth.

* * *

"And then at lunch I ran into Marie Paquin, you remember, from grade 10? I didn't recognize her at first, she looked so grown up, but I guess we all are, eh?"

"Mmhmm."

"Anyway, after lunch we met up again and just talked for hours. She's already married with a baby now, can you believe that?"

"Crazy," Antoine hummed. His voice was muffled and buzzing, too close to the mouthpiece, and she could hear a faint rapid tapping in the background.

"Are you playing video games?" she asked sharply, and then, without waiting for an answer, "You know I _hate_ it when you do that when you're on the phone with me."

"It's just Madden, I'm not paying that much attention..." Antoine sighed, sounding eerily close with the phone tucked to his shoulder, and the tapping ceased. "I heard everything you said, by the way. Marie Paquin, grade ten, had a baby, you're going crazy missing me 'cause I'm such a great boyfriend."

Karen closed her eyes as she laughed, picturing clearly the way Antoine's chin would be tipped down a little, mouth curved up only on one side, eyes bright and playful. "I don't remember anything about that last part," she told him, "but maybe I am a little. Oh, that reminds me, when are you checking into the hotel All Star week? I need to buy my ticket."

"You're... you're coming to the game? I mean, that's great, I'd love it, but are you sure it's okay to miss so much class? I don't want to get you in trouble."

"It's fine," she said. "It's worth the trouble. Isn't it?"

A long breathless pause, and he was saying, "Yes, of course. Always."

She found she was less surprised by the lie than by the silence.

* * *

Antoine didn't get insomnia. He didn't toss and turn before big games, he didn't wake up in the night--even his dreams seemed pleasant. No matter how high the stakes, no matter how keyed up or torn down or excited/anxious/scared he may have felt, once the lights went off and the magic hour came around he was dream-deep, unshakeably at peace.

So Karen knew immediately when she woke up at 2 a.m. with her heart pounding in her temples that the _wrongness_ that woke her up was his absence beside her. Tracing the cooling sheets on the left side to the open bedroom doorway she followed his path through the apartment, feeling her way through the darkness like a lingering dream, everything sketched-in and soft at the edges, charcoal-grey.

She found him in the kitchen, bare feet and boxers and an old Victoriaville Tigers t-shirt, his sleep-rumpled silhouette outlined by the pale streetlights below. His back was to her, one arm braced above the window and his forehead pressed to the glass, and though she couldn't see his face, she knew his body well enough to read the relaxation in it, the stillness and the peace.

The cordless phone was in his other hand, and he was murmuring warm and sleepy things just loud enough to carry across the space between them, whispering, "Breathe, baby," over and over again with a tenderness that took her breath away.

* * *

There are a lot of things Antoine doesn't know about her. There are questions he doesn't ask, and there are secrets she doesn't tell, the same as him. The name of the first boy she ever kissed, the last thing that made her cry, the wicked things she thinks sometimes when she's kneeling for communion--Antoine has no idea. The difference is that she is waiting to tell him. She is waiting for the day he'll ask, waiting for him to gently pry open her fists and let them all fly free, let her hands empty, so she doesn't have to hold on anymore.

She knows he's in love with Jason. That's something he doesn't know about her. She didn't always know; he used to be more careful than this, making sure to call every night, to ask about her day, to tell her how much she was missed. He was pretty good at it, because it wasn't exactly a lie, and it took her a long time to figure out what was missing. The first time she met Jason, that afternoon he showed up on Antoine's doorstep--that was when it finally all made sense.

She read Jason, who was hiding nothing, wholly confused and then sunk with hurt like a shock of cold water, too surprised to lie. She read Antoine, the high color in his cheeks, the way he couldn't find a place for his hands, moving them in his pockets and raking his hair back from his face as he talked in spirals, every other word a shield for the truth. More than any of that, though, she saw the way his face changed the instant he saw Jason. Before he could stop himself--before he could even make sense of what had happened and what it meant--for that brief unconscious instant he was made entirely of joy, lit up as if from the inside by love. It was only a moment, but it was clear as anything in the sky, and, like a fixed star, once she'd found it she could not lose it again.

Another thing Antoine doesn't know is that it isn't just suspicions; she knows they're sleeping together, because she's seen it for herself.

Oh, not _that_ ; not a passionate embrace, clothes thrown aside and naked bodies entwined; nothing that dramatic. Just a kiss. That's all.

Just a kiss, only delete "just", too small a word to encompass what she saw, and "a", for it was many kisses, multiplied by each time their lips parted and met again, every word they whispered. As for "kiss"--well, a meeting of mouths, certainly, but there weren't words in either language for the way they clung to each other, the hungry pull of their teeth, the sounds they made and the bruises they left behind.

Like something in a movie, she'd rounded the corner, and there they were: pressed together in an empty bedroom at some teammate's house, Jason hard up against the wall and Antoine hard against him. Hands in each other's hair, tongues in each other's mouths, legs tangled together, until it got hard to keep track of what belonged to who, which hand was Jason's, which moan was Antoine's. She watched them, drunk and stunned, for 10 endless seconds, run through with amazement; then she turned around and headed back out the way she'd come.

Back to the party, back to their bed, back to pretending. Back to waiting for Antoine to notice, to see the change in her as she'd seen it in him, and ask, What's wrong? What's happened? What do you need? Knowing none of the questions would ever come.

She asks herself the same things, the ache behind her breastbone like a stone, like a fist, hard to breathe around. She catches sight of him across the room for just an instant, struck in perfect profile and smiling at something she can't see, and he's like some dark star, drawing all the light to him. Shining it back so bright he blinds.


End file.
